A decorated war photographer who fooled the world's media into thinking he was working for the UN has been exposed as a fake after an investigation revealed he stole photos of a Cornish surfer and pasted them into his scenes.

Eduardo Martins' dramatic images of some of the world’s worst war zones were published by the likes of the BBC, Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera and even Getty Images.

Claiming to be a 32-year-old from Brazil who survived leukaemia, the handsome blond surfer earned a growing reputation, double-page spreads in top international magazines and more than 130,000 followers on Instagram.

Martins, whose real identity has never been verified, boasted of visiting regions including the Gaza Strip, Iraq and ISIS controlled Syria.

Read More

But the unknown conman was finally caught out last month following an investigation led by BBC Brasil.

It was revealed that for years, Martins took images from genuine photographers before photoshopping the head of Cornish surf blogger Max Hepworth-Povey, from Newquay , onto the pictures of the war zones.

This image of Max Hepworth-Povey on his own Instagram account was stolen by the fraudster

By passing them off as himself, Martins made it look as though he was in the middle of raging battles.

The fraudster also shared casual photos of Mr Hepworth-Povey surfing, making it look like he had a life outside of snapping war zones.

It was this blunder which alarmed friends of the Newquay surfer.

This image is from Max Hepworth-Povey's Instagram account. Max's head was then photoshopped into a fake war zone image by the fraudster (below)

The conman photoshopped the image above into this fake war zone image

“When my friend showed me the photos first of all I thought it was a joke, some a***hole [messing] with me,” Mr Hepworth-Povey, who runs surfing holidays for a travel company, told BBC Brasil .

“But actually, my photos were stolen, it's crazy that some random guy decided to use my image among so many options across internet.

“I work very far from war zones, with surfing trips. All my pictures have always been taken in that context.

The offending Instagram account, which has now been deleted

“I was relaxing, sipping wine, when a friend contacted me saying that they had stolen my identity in a kind of internet catch.”

The BBC’s Brazilian site first published an interview along with photos and videos supposedly shot by Martins in July and then revealed his scam after an investigation by the outlet’s Lebanon-based Brazilian reporter Natasha Ribeiro.

The scale of the deception, which emerged in recent days, has sent shockwaves through Brazilian photographic circles.

As Martins’ story began to unravel, reporters made contact with the Brazilian photographer Fernando Costa Netto, who had been talking to Martins on the internet for over a year and had published an interview with him on the Brazilian surfing site Waves.

In the interview Martins said he had leukaemia at 18 and had spent seven years in treatment. He told Costa Netto he was currently in Mosul, Iraq, had accompanied the Free Syrian Army in 2015 and had even been grazed by a shot in Aleppo.

Getty Images said in a statement it had removed all the work purporting to be by Martins, who has removed the Instagram account and reportedly gone into hiding somewhere in Australia.